Southbury native takes over at Winchester Center

WINCHESTER -- While the church is nearly as old as the town itself, Winchester Center Congregational Church welcomed a brand new leader earlier this month with the arrival of the Rev. Jackie Hall.

A Southbury native and former stay at home mother, Hall oversaw her first service at the church across from Winchester Center's town green on Jan. 3. Since then, she said she has been concentrating on meeting the parish's nearly 90 members and get her bearings in the area.

"My goals right now are very simple," she said. " I want to see how things work, then I'll try to make things better."

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A recent graduate of Yale Divinity School, Hall said she got her call to the ministry after seeing her children begin to grow up.

"I figured, I have to come up with something that I'm going to do with the rest of my life," she said, adding that she briefly considered purusing a career as an electrician before she found her higher purpose.

"God had a much different idea," she laughed.

Parishioner Graham Waldron, who sat on the selection committee that ultimately picked Hall from a pool of 20 applicants, said Hall seemed to fit in with the parish's vision from the start.

"She interviewed the best, her background looked real good, and we liked everything about her," he said.

Hall said that over time, she would like to expand the church's range of youth-oriented programs to keep children and families involved. Fostering the already thriving sense of community was also among her priorities, she added.

"It's really family here. Church is sort of the last bastion of community like that," she said.

Waldron said he had nothing but confidence that Hall would be an asset to the parish.

"She seems to be fitting in very nicely. We're very glad we got her, and we hope to keep her for many years," he said.